Rep. Patty Lundstrom
By MILAN SIMONICH
Santa Fe New Mexican
After being ousted as chairwoman of the committee that helps shape the state budget, Rep. Patty Lundstrom offered an immodest assessment of herself.
Lundstrom, D-Gallup, authorized a statement saying she’s spent her 22 years in the Legislature “protecting our female and minority populations”.
Many women and men would disagree with her. In the last four years, Lundstrom twice voted to keep on the books a 1969 law criminalizing abortion.
The Legislature in 2021 finally repealed the dormant anti-abortion statute after voters unseated five conservative Democratic senators.
Of the 45 Democrats in the House of Representatives, Lundstrom was one of six who voted to preserve the law making abortion illegal except in cases of rape or if pregnancy endangered a woman’s life.
Lundstrom knew she was at odds with her caucus and most of the state’s residents on abortion rights. She still hoped to ascend to speaker of the House of Representatives, the most powerful position in the Legislature.
“We’ve talked about her being speaker. There’s concerns on her behalf about the Legislature,” Rep. Harry Garcia told me last summer. Garcia, D-Grants, is one of Lundstrom’s allies.
Lundstrom had no opponent in the primary or general elections of 2022. Even so, state records show her campaign account contains a robust $297,000, largely because of donations from corporations and political committees. And this was after Lundstrom spread around cash to candidates running in Democratic primary elections.
Based on Lundstrom’s claim that she advocates for women, one might assume she favored female candidates. The opposite is true.
Women last year ran against men in seven Democratic primary elections for state House seats. Lundstrom donated more money to the male candidates in six of those races.
For instance, Lundstrom contributed $3,000 to Marlo Martinez in his unsuccessful attempt to unseat Rep. Susan Herrera, D-Embudo. Lundstrom gave Herrera $500.
In a race in Southern New Mexico, Lundstrom donated $1,000 to Ravi Bhaskar. She contributed nothing to Tara Jaramillo, who defeated Bhaskar and won the District 38 seat in the general election, a pickup for Democrats.
Overall in the seven primaries, Lundstrom donated $15,500 to male candidates and $4,000 to the women running against them.
Her pattern was similar to that of former state Republican Party Chairman Harvey Yates, a wealthy oilman. Yates poured money into the campaigns of Democrats he perceived as conservative.
In her long-shot ambition to be speaker of the House, Lundstrom knew she would need the support of conservative Democrats and all 25 Republicans in the chamber. She was less a champion of women than she was of candidates who might support her.
The speaker’s job was open this year, but Lundstrom wasn’t the choice of Democrats or Republicans. Rep. Javier Martínez, D-Albuquerque, was elected in a party-line 45-25 vote. Rep. Candy Spence Ezzell of Roswell was the Republicans’ designated loser.
Once installed, Martínez removed Lundstrom as chairwoman of the Appropriations and Finance Committee. In a statement Lundstrom authorized and distributed through a publicist, she described her demotion as an “apparent sexist, racist & retaliatory power play”.
To be sure, Martínez’s power enabled him to depose Lundstrom and install a finance chairman with whom he was more comfortable. Lundstrom would have used the same system to her advantage if she’d had the votes to become speaker.
Her charges of racism and sexism are false. So is her claim that she provided “steadfast and prudent leadership” on standing and interim finance committees.
Many legislators reveal their determination to use public money for pet projects. Lundstrom was one of them. In a high-profile example, she castigated the University of New Mexico Board of Regents after it voted unanimously to eliminate men’s soccer and three other intercollegiate sports.
Lundstrom wanted to overturn the regents’ decision at taxpayer expense. She hoped to spend $2 million annually to save the sports programs. This was only two years after the state was so broke it had to take money from school districts to pay the bills.
Lundstrom persisted in her campaign to save the sports programs even after UNM’s president said the idea would lead to financial disaster. UNM would have had to spend millions more to remain in compliance with the Title IX law. Schools receiving federal funding must provide equal opportunities in sports for men and women, or Washington shuts off the faucet.
Another of Lundstrom’s self-serving statements was that she has “fought for our state’s most vulnerable.” In 2021, she was part of a group in the House that opposed a bill to lower annual interest rates charged by storefront lenders from 175 percent to 36 percent. Lundstrom’s bloc pushed through an amendment for 99 percent rates on most loans and 36 percent on the rest.
Lundstrom had received $6,000 in contributions from the storefront lending industry in the 2020 election cycle. That was the most of any House member. The reform bill fizzled, leaving the 175 percen interest rate in place.
Public outrage brought about change in 2022. Rep. Herrera and the policy organization Think New Mexico mobilized overwhelming support to cut the interest rate to 36 percent. Everyone knew the bill would pass. Lundstrom voted for it, a follower instead of a leader.
Lundstrom’s reaction to her displacement is overwrought. To massage a line from an old movie, there’s no crying in politics. She’s played enough hardball to know it.